Social distancing won't go away any time soon even after lockdown is lifted, the Home Secretary has said.
Priti Patel has predicted that social distancing will continue "in every single work area" after lockdown and will become the "new norm".
Answering questions from the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday about her department's plans as part of the Government's exit strategy from lockdown, Ms Patel said: "The fact of the matter is we will not go back to how we were in early March."
She told the committee's MPs: "I'm not at liberty to go into the detail of some of the discussions that are taking place. But I think the fact that testing is dramatically upscaling... clearly that will have an impact now in terms of giving hopefully greater public confidence to eventually going back to work.
"The fact of the matter is we will not go back to how we were in early March. There'll be new norms that will inevitably come off in the way in which social distancing is now dominating our lives and is affecting society. Social distancing even in my own place of work right now is taking place.
"We would expect social distancing in every single work area, whether it is an office or a construction site, social distancing on public transport going forward, these are all active things that rightly so we have to test, we have to put through consideration."
Ms Patel was speaking on the same day it was announced the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown will take part in a new advisory group to help get Wales out of lockdown.
The UK government has already said it is considering letting people meet up to 10 friends as a way of relaxing lockdown, although this wouldn't automatically apply in Wales.
First Minister Mark Drakeford says he prefers a "traffic light system" to lifting lockdown and that the Welsh Government has set seven tests that will have to be met before it will ease the lock down restrictions in Wales.
On Wednesday Welsh Government counsel general and Brexit minister Jeremy Miles warned that the impact of the pandemic in Wales could be "deeper and more profound than elsewhere".
